The Ultimate Best Books of 2017 List

Or: Clarity in Consensus

It’s the end of the year, and everybody has an opinion. And of course, where there’s an opinion, there’s a listicle. The river of Best of 2017 lists can be exhausting this time of year, so as a public service, and because my math skills are always in need of a little exercise, I’ve created a streamlined master list of the books that the most people loved this year. Of course, I couldn’t include everything (like NPR’s enormous list of favorites). But I looked at the end-of-year roundups from 35 outlets and tracked a total of 520 discrete books in order to figure out the most critically popular books of the year. Does that mean they are the Best? You’ll have to decide for yourself, by reading them.

It’s interesting to compare this list of the “best” books to the most recommended books of fall (though it’s not a perfect match-up, of course, because many of these books came out in other seasons)—for instance, everyone was pretty sure they were going to like Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, and Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, and then they did! Success. Other books fell a little in the relative rankings. But all in all, it’s pretty satisfying to see how much people loved and recommended books by women and people of color this year.